DECISION OF C.P.C. CENTRAL COMMITTEE AND STATE COUNCIL

On Reform of Entrance Examination and
Enrolment in Higher Educational Institutions

[This article is reprinted from Peking Review, Vol. 9, #26, June 24,
1966, p. 3. Thanks are due to the WWW.WENGEWANG.ORG
web site for some of the work done for this posting.]

THE Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the
State Council issued a notice on June 13 announcing that, to ensure the successful carrying out
of the cultural revolution to the end, and to effect a thorough reform of the educational system,
a decision had been made to change the old system of entrance examination and enrolment of
students in higher educational institutions and to postpone this years enrolment of new students
for colleges and universities for half a year.

The full text of the notice follows:

Considering that the great cultural revolution is only now
developing in the colleges, universities and senior middle schools, a certain period of time will
be needed in order to carry this movement through thoroughly and successfully. Bourgeois domination
is still deeply rooted and the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is very acute
in quite a number of universities, colleges and middle schools. A thoroughgoing cultural revolution
movement in the higher educational institutions and senior middle schools will have most
far-reaching effects on school education in the future. Meanwhile, though it has been constantly
improved since liberation, the method of examination and enrolment for the higher educational
institutions, has failed, in the main, to free itself from the set pattern of the bourgeois system
of examination; and such a method is harmful to the implementation of the guiding policy on
education formulated by the Central Committee of the Party and Chairman Mao, and to absorption into
the higher educational institutions of a still greater number of revolutionary young people from
among the workers, peasants and soldiers. This system of examination must be completely reformed.
Therefore, time is also needed to study and work out new methods of enrolment.

In view of the above-mentioned situation, the Central Committee
of the Chinese Communist Party and the State Council have decided to postpone for half a year the
1966 enrolment into the higher educational institutions so that, on the one hand, they and the
senior middle schools will have enough time to carry out the cultural revolution thoroughly and
successfully and on the other hand, there will be adequate time for making all preparations for
the implementation of a new method of enrolment.

In order that enrolment and the opening of a new semester in the
senior middle schools shall not be affected, the students graduating from senior middle school
this term in schools where the cultural revolution is still under way should be properly
accommodated and their time-table arranged by the school authorities so that the movement may be
carried out thoroughly and successfully; in the case of students in schools where the movement is
completed before enrolment into the higher educational institutions has begun, their schools
should organize them to participate in productive labour in the countryside or in the factories.